.jpg)
“An extraordinary tale, in which the author seems to us to disclose uncommon powers of poetic imagination.”
A young scientist, consumed by ambition, pushes the boundaries of nature and creates something he never expected. Told through letters and confessions, Shelley’s novel asks questions about responsibility, compassion, and what it means to be human that remain unsettling two centuries later. Widely considered one of the greatest Romantic and Gothic novels, and one of the first works of science fiction ever written. First published anonymously in January 1818. Mary Shelley’s name appeared on the revised edition of 1831.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851)
Daughter of the philosopher William Godwin and the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who died eleven days after her birth. Mary began writing Frankenstein at the age of eighteen during a stay near Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori. The novel was published anonymously two years later, when she was just twenty years old. She married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and continued writing novels, short stories, and biographical works throughout her life.
